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Larx Serac
Larx Serac is a Lylatian who served as a member of the mercenary team Starfox for most of his career, though has since retired to regions unknown. He holds a doctorate in astrophysics, and is a highly-skilled mechanical engineer, especially in matters concerning light fighter-craft and engine design. He is an ordained minister of 'The Lady', a member of an obscure religious group made up primarily of Lylatians. Larx is regarded as a dangerous and eccentric individual that is hard to trust, and few are willing to work with him for any extended period of time other than members of the Starfox team, who have come to respect his techniques as effective... if wildly insane. Among two doctorates, Larx is also referred to now and then as a possible expert on Valian technology, having been seen many times pilotting a frigate believed to be of their design, but thus far any attempts to gather information from him have been rebuked. Sometimes violently. Lylat EARLY HISTORY Larx knew very little about the world around him; the events and the comings and goings. He was only slightly aware that he was even in a world at all, as he spent all of his time in his own world: thought. For Larx, all that really mattered was enjoying life, and a great deal of enjoyment was found in making things work. From a young age he spent his time researching mechanics and physics instead of history and social skills. As a result, while he was very knowledgeable in engineering, he knew very little about past events or with dealing with others. Talking to other people was generally something that made him extremely uncomfortable; he spent all of his time with his devices, made of odds and ends and broken parts. All of these traits together made him a recluse, hiding behind his books and thinking of things he could build next. He was found proficient at piloting light fighter-craft, and was taken into the Starfox Team at the age of twenty years as a technician-in-training to work on their beloved Arwings. From the moment Larx joined Starfox, he didn't like the other members; only a man named Aradian, who worked with him to convert an older model of Arwing into a bomber-style craft. Most of his time was spent in the Hanger working on his own Assault Arwing, which he whimsically named the 'Valiant Star', painting it in bright colors and heavily modifying it to suit his needs. He was unhappy with his position as a 'newcomer', but perfectly fine with his position of 'mechanic'. Here he could do what he loved; work. ENGINEER Shortly after he joined he began to experience combat, and found he didn't like it; it was frantic, horrible, chaotic; all of the things he didn't see when he worked on his machines, and everything his mind rejected in life. He quickly took up a position on the 'field' as a light sniper, staying out of the way and knocking the turrets of large ships off for others to assault. Between battles he would spend his time trying to focus his thoughts away from memories of combat and increase the stability of his engine, which was unreliable from the start and only returned to being so as each battle damaged critical parts. His once brilliantly-painted ship, the Valiant Star, became a dull patchwork of the pieces of more than a hundred fighters, not all of which were Arwings. He enjoyed his work, and enjoyed helping the Starfox team against Andross (so long as he didn't have to get into heavy combat), but the long days of battle were beginning to wear him down and make him falter. His work suffered, and he canceled testing on many of his 'inventions' just to make ends meet with keeping his unreliable fighter in repair. He might have been an engineering genius, but stress left him a wreck few would think worth salvage. STRANDED As the war against the returned Andross continued, Larx Serac found his friends called on for help more and more often. Soon Aquas was being bombarded, and then Corneria itself started to see bombers over its cities. Starfox had grown since the original Lylat War, but even it became stretched thin. Larx was close to resigning his position when the team was called to evacuate a group of people from a lab on the world of Fichina, which was made entirely of ice and rock. Fichina had little of interest other than a base of operations established by the RTC. They had sent a distress call, and Starfox as well as many others were sent in to investigate. What they found was a group of refugees trying to survive attack from a breed of mutant monsters known as 'Skulks'. With nothing else to do the evacuation began. When leaving the planet, Larx's engine failed yet again, and his fighter plunged back to the surface of Fichina. He started up an emergency beacon and took shelter in the abandoned RTC base, hoping that Starfox would return within the hour to retrieve him. For reasons he never learned, Starfox didn't respond to the beacon. Foremost was that the signal was weak, and second because a quarantine had been placed on the planet. Thirdly, the Starfox team had much more pressing business at the time, such as the abrupt disappearance of their leader. THE RISE OF ARCLIS On Fichina, hunted by a pair of remaining skulks, Larx began to lose the last threads of his grip on reality. The stress built up over almost a year of fighting in the war, coupled with his forced separation from the order and calm of his engineering, began to tear his mind apart; he hallucinated, heard voices in the dark corridors of the base, and fled from every faint glimmer of light, believing himself hunted by not only skulks but by pirates, or Venom soldiers, and in some cases even the Starfox team gone horribly wrong. Over time rose an alternate personality, based on what Larx remembered of his brother, Arclis Serac. This other 'person' advised him to leave the lower levels of the base and venture into the ceilings and ventilation systems, hunting after the demonic creatures that hunted him in return. He was only lightly armed, but he trusted his 'brother' to lead him through. Arclis, the alternate personality, eventually gained control over Larx's entire mind, twisting his thoughts. He came to the conclusion that Starfox had abandoned him to die, and then imagined that they were instead the ones that put him there in the first place. Enraged, Larx/Arclis swore to destroy the Starfox team, even if he had to die trying. ESCAPE FROM FICHINA Using pieces of equipment all over the RTC base, Larx reconstructed his Arwing. The once brilliant blue paint had faded to gray, and so he used green paint from a storage room. The pitted metal soaked up the liquid, but the markings of the Starfox team's logo still showed through. Larx called it a blight on his craft, and that it would only bring him bad luck; because of this he renamed his ship 'The Tainted Star'. During this time, the Starfox team returned to the planet for reasons of their own. Believing this to be the demonic images that had sought to kill him before, Larx hid in the ventilation systems until they left, and then redoubled his efforts to get off the planet. After nearly two years of being stranded, Larx launched his repaired Arwing and left the world behind, traveling to Corneria, where a distress beacon had been activated...and suddenly silenced THE TRAITOR The war against Andross had taken a frightening turn in his absence; Corneria was being overrun from within by a horrible plague of nanomachines, designed to control those infected with them. Over the planet and on it the battle raged, but was very quickly being lost as Corneria's own forces fought against her. And so, in the nearby asteroid fields, Larx/Arclis revealed himself to the fleeing Starfox team. They were surprised to see him, of course, but far more surprised to hear him claim that it was they that had left him on Fichina to die. Arclis had gained complete control over Larx by this time, and no amount of talk or threat could convince him that Starfox was not to blame. But the war still raged, and even though he hated the others for having 'killed' him on Fichina, Larx/Arclis promised to help destroy Andross once and for all, and retake Corneria from the false 'Androssian Empire'. After openly promising to kill both Morohtar Reyener and Roxanne McCloud as soon as the war ended, Arclis vanished into the nearest asteroid field. THE END OF THE WAR During the rest of the war, Arclis/Larx would appear from the shadows in his ancient Arwing, striking at Venom's forces alongside Starfox and then vanishing into deep space once again. His ship began to grow noticeably more alien in appearance as pieces of the Venom ships were added to it for repairs, as well as floating scrap from the belts. In addition the Tainted Star acquired a light mining laser, a more powerful engine-core from an unknown vessel, space-mines, and many other dangerous and exotic devices. Among the projects he worked on was a more powerful FTL drive based on what he could salvage from more advanced systems he had added to the ship over the months. As the cure for the nanite infestation began to spread, and Andross was driven back, the threat of his attacking Starfox in the end loomed. He began to appear less and less frequently in battle, and finally vanished altogether for a month. When he returned in the final retaking of Corneria, the alternate personality of Arclis seemed to be pushed back to make way for a renewed Larx, and the young man repainted the Starfox logo on his modified Arwing and joined their ranks as a loyal member once again. But when the assault on Venom itself began, Larx retreated from the planet and contacted the rest of the team. He claimed that he didn't want to stay when Andross was defeated, for fear that 'Arclis' would rise up and seek his demented revenge. With only a few parting words Larx left orbit, and Starfox, behind. THE EXPERIMENT With no other course of action in his mind but to get away from Lylat forever, Larx began putting the final touches on his yet-untested FTL drive. He packed only the most basic provisions and made his way to the edge of the Lylat system, aiming his Arwing into the bright core of the galaxy he took a breath and poured all the power he could spare into his new drive system. The engine-core of his Arwing, now beyond unreliability, exploded into a cataclysmic ball of plasma that began to consume the craft. It had never been designed to operate like this, with parts that were never meant to be used in FTL travel or even on a fightercraft. Some parts burned up entirely. Larx knew he would die, and said a final prayer. But against all odds, his drive still activated, and the remains of his engine winked his ship out of existence. Somehow, among all of the wreckage he had dug through and pieced his ship together with, enough parts of the unknown FTL system he had been tinkering with remained to activate. What happened next, Larx didn't know; he blacked out as his engine turned to vapor behind him, and a minute later the tortured remains of his Arwing emerged in the middle of a nebula, in distance parts unknown. EXILE Larx's account tells that he was rescued by a military starship controlled by alien creatures that called themselves Sempari. According to him, they were tall, grey humanoids with an advanced knowledge of all things concerning medicine. They were apparently caught in the middle of a civil war, and were drawing close to utter destruction. After this, Larx says nothing about what happened to him for the next five years. But five years later he reappeared in the Lylat System, piloting a logistics frigate of created by the ancient Valian species into battle against the Kreet, alongside the remaining members of the Starfox team. Etoile ((UNDER CONSTRUCTION)) Present Day Larx Serac is currently residing in parts unknown, retired from active mercenary work. Little else is known of him at this time. He owns, pilots, and maintains the repair-frigate The Lady's Bid, as well as a heavily-modified Arwing ST and the now-recovered 'Tainted Star' Arwing. Category:Characters Category:Meadoans Category:Pre-Etoile Characters Category:Lylatian Category:Starfox Team Category:List of important characters Category:Player-turned-NPC